


Byzantine

by heartsblade



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hints of reincarnation, M/M, Marriage, everyone say Thank You Camilla, marriage problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 12:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20436104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsblade/pseuds/heartsblade
Summary: Ryoma and Xander take time out to realize they have some unresolved issues that could cause catastrophic consequences if they leave it be.





	Byzantine

**Author's Note:**

> (thinks about ryoma and xander) how're we coping in this chili's tonight fellas

A commonality shared between Xander and Ryoma is their love of having things in order and balanced.

Though that isn’t to say it is the only thing to be shared between them; it is one of many, though it is something that greatly determined their ability to get along in the manner they do. Both men strived equally for perfection in their own way, their methods a fork in the proverbial road to their individual goals and way of life.

There were some things in life that neither could tame, nor be given credit of having some semblance of order. The problem, in fact, lie within the commonality itself: Xander and Ryoma were peculiar of having order, and their methods of achieving that were almost vastly different from the other and upset what either man deemed to be orderly.

To be on equal footing would be worthy of celebration; this is a well known fact to those with intimate knowledge of their circumstances.

For Xander, most of what he did hinged on whether or not it was important, and just how important it was, and if it should be done before or after something else. If it could be taken care of without disrupting his work, then it was not all that important to him, and it would have to wait until later. If his siblings weren’t dying, at risk of dying, or already dead, then all was well in his eyes.

For Ryoma, he would not ever hesitate to drop everything at a moment’s notice for his family. He had his own system of doing things, though nothing would ever hold him back from heeding the call of a sibling. In terms of his job, he worked very similarly to Xander; urgency was everything. For him, there was a balance; that way, it made him more involved and play a more active role in his siblings’ lives. 

This wholly determined how they ran their respective enterprises. Each man had a way of maintaining balance, or some semblance of it, anyway. 

What Ryoma struggled to understand is how Xander could call his work life and personal life “balanced” when he had a larger presence in the workplace than he did with his family. He questioned, and questioned frequently, the logic in Xander organizing his life so that he could dedicate it to his work.

“It gives me more time to work on cases that require heavier investment,” Xander had said one night over dinner. “Less time is wasted that way.”

“Would it not be wiser,” Ryoma began, bringing his wine to his lips. “To have Camilla take over once in awhile?”

“How so?” Xander challenged, lofting a pale brow with his own glass hovering before his jaw. “It is my job just as much as it is hers.”

“That is why you should let her do it, then.” Ryoma lowers his drink and cuts into a slab of chicken with his knife. “I doubt she will find a reason to complain. In turn, you will have more time to focus on other things.”

“Like what?”

“Spending time with your loved ones.”

“I spend an adequate amount of time with my family.”

“Xander.”

“I’m not in the mood to have this conversation, Ryoma.”

And so it remains unsolved.

Xander had a person at the ready to perform any number of services his family may be in need or want of. To him, this was organized; to him, it meant more time for his work. To Ryoma, it was absurd. He worked just as hard as Xander, and yet he had a healthy, stable and loving relationship with each of his siblings. He visited the family home so often that he may as well have never left at all; for Xander, it was much different. It is true that he’s always been like this, but not to the extent that he has been over the past two weeks. He rarely took his days off, and after work, he would eat his dinner, kiss his husband and go straight to bed. Sometimes he’d switch it up and immediately bury his nose in his laptop before Ryoma’s had time to clear away the table; sometimes he didn’t come home at all. At first, it’d been terrible for Ryoma, to be all alone in their big luxury home. Now, however, he simply drives to see his family, or he cracks open some wine and watches reruns of Hawaii Five-O until he falls asleep. 

Tonight was fated to be another one of those nights, it seems. He pulls into their driveway with a sigh, and rather than going inside the moment he shuts his car off, he remains. His hands are still on the wheel, his belt still across his shoulder; he contemplates pulling back out.

This is one of those things that neither man could tame, nor take credit for having any semblance of order. Their work lives were perfect; their personal lives were a wreck. The achievement of one would not have been possible without some sacrifice from the other, though it seemed that Ryoma made more sacrifices than not these days. He made his life so that his work and time spent with his family were balanced and not hanging _in_ the balance. 

He’s not sure if the same could be said for Xander.

Tonight, like many nights before, Ryoma’s mind wanders to dangerous territories. He thinks of the consequences of all that’s transpired up until this moment, about how swift the tides are that carried away the time of their “honeymoon phase”, and how Xander’s progressively widened the distance between them when Ryoma’s given up so much to close it. It would seem that the more he did to bridge the gap, the more Xander did to widen it.

Ryoma tilts his head back against his head rest and exhales slowly through his nose. These thoughts are purely borne of frustration, just as much as they are borne of unfamiliar, and wholly unwanted insecurity. The marital warmth of their home had been drained from it, and he fears the familial warmth is soon to follow; not only in Xander’s family home, but in his heart, too. He wonders when it started to close off, when Xander became cold and distant, like a mountain to be admired from afar yet too dangerous to be near, when the ice around his heart thickened to impossible proportions. Ryoma wonders, in that same line of thought, when he allowed it to happen, and why hadn’t he noticed it sooner to do something about it?

Some things are out of his hands, it seems. Ryoma didn’t like it when control slipped between his fingers. He had a complex about losing things and having things taken from him, and that barely touches the one he developed over losing in the first place.

That’s another thing they shared between them: their hatred for loss, the feeling of losing.

For Ryoma, it was all his life. He strove to be the top of everything he did, to excel and falter in none. Throughout his adolescence into adulthood, he was not less than perfect, and never aimed for less than perfection. He carried that same mindset into this marriage, and the feeling it gave him, what he felt now-- it was unacceptable.

Ryoma didn’t do unacceptable.

Surely all is not lost. There’s counseling, couples therapy, self-help books and guiding words. Ryoma’s always found a way and will continue to do so. After all, he’s never been known to roll over and die, in the manner of speaking. Quitting is not an option.

In fact, the more he thought of it as a challenge to overcome, the more he felt determined to do just that. He smiles to himself, smiling at the revelation of how simple these things really are when he thinks about it long and hard enough. He sighs once more, though out of relief than disappointment, and relaxes into his seat, his hold on the wheel slacking, unaware of the fact he’d been gripping it so tightly in the first place. All of this took a matter of minutes, if not seconds. It feels nice to figure things out in so timely a manner.

Unfortunately, the knock on his window startles him and he’s back to where he was before, all tense and sharp, until he sees the person at his window and turns the car on to roll it down.

“Did you forget your keys?” Xander’s voice inquires as soon as there’s enough space for his words to carry though for Ryoma to hear. “You remember where the spare is hidden, don’t you?”

_Behind the loose stone in the foundation,_ Ryoma recalls inwardly. “I have them right here.” He holds up a keyring with a purple mochi keychain attached.

“Oh. Then why are you out here?” Ryoma notes the crease in Xander’s brow, the look of concern washing over his features that he hasn’t seen in awhile. If he allowed himself to dwell more on that thought, he’d also allow himself to admit he hasn’t seen Xander’s face truly and clearly as he does now in quite some time. “Is everything alright?”

“Quite. I’ll be in in just a moment.”

There’s a pause, and Xander starts to worry his bottom lip. “I understand if you need time alone.” He finally says, his gaze flickering to the house for the briefest of seconds. “Is there anything you would like for me to carry in?”

“I don’t need time alone,” Ryoma responds, his fingers beginning to tap idly against the wheel. “I thought you would like to let yourself in is all.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

Ryoma’s tempted to say something biting and scathing at that. Instead, he rolls his window up, shuts his car off, grabs his case and jacket and clicks the remote on his keychain twice before he follows Xander up the steps and into their home.

“You’re home earlier than usual,” Ryoma comments, stopping just before the two-step staircase leading down to their living room to remove his shoes. Xander hums from somewhere beside him and gently sets his shoes next to Ryoma’s, and waits until Ryoma straightens to plant a quick kiss on his cheek before he starts making his way into the kitchen, flicking lights on as he goes. “What’s the occasion?”

“Occasion? There’s no occasion.” Xander’s voice is accompanied by the clink and clatter of various dishware. “I finished early.”

“I see.” Ryoma deposits his jacket and suitcase onto the couch. He starts pulling at his tie, the sound of it sliding from the collar of his shirt loud in the silence that follows. “Are you preparing dinner tonight?”

“I am. Feel free to get comfortable in the meantime. Wash up, if you’d like. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

“You don’t need any help?”

“I should be fine.”

Ryoma doesn’t press it any further.

Instead, he reappears twenty minutes later looking not the least-bit put together as he had been when they walked through the door. He’s in his most comfortable pyjamas, wearing his most comfortable slippers and pulling his hair into a ponytail he neglected to do the moment he stepped out of the shower. He walks into the kitchen, only to discover it empty; one glance to the dining room, however, put to rest the initial question that popped into his mind and replaced it with another. “Sukiyaki?”

“Kanto style. I know you haven’t had it in awhile,” Xander says, arranging the ingredients in the pot atop their portable gas burner they haven’t used since winter. “So I thought it would be nice to have tonight. The season isn’t quite right for it,” he laughs. “But it’s your favourite, so it balances out in the end.”

“So there was an occasion,” Ryoma murmurs, depositing himself into the chair adjacent to his husband, his chin settling into the cup of his hand. He sits silently for a bit, simply enjoying the way he fiddles with the ingredients in the pot in that peculiar way of his, as if he were aiming for the dish to look aesthetically pleasing, his perfectionism not ceasing even in this. “How was work?” He asks, albeit with hesitation, like he wasn’t quite sure if that was the right thing to say, like the words were foreign on his tongue. In a way, they were; Ryoma’s gotten used to them not making small-talk.

Xander remains silent for awhile longer yet, and it’s not until he covers the pot with its lid that he finally breaks the quietness of the room. “It was fine,” he says, and Ryoma does not miss how his words are clipped, chopped as if they fell to the sharpness of a blade to make them blunt and awkward. “Camilla and I… came to an agreement about our firm,” he follows up with a sigh, his fingers pulling away from the ironware in front of him to join together and flex and bend to crack them. “About how we should split our workload.”

“And how did that go?” Ryoma recalls that Camilla and her brother were at odds over the current circumstances surrounding their law firm, and in that same moment, he remembered the issues that were brought up, and how easily they could be circumvented if Xander relinquished some of his control to his sibling. Xander was regarded widely for his uncanny way of closing cases; some might even argue he was one of the best, if not the best of the best, and utter in the same breath their disdain for the secrecy in his methods.

Naturally, as it is with all good things in life, too much of it can become a curse in the same eye that held it a blessing. His dedication to his work, to his image, made for his personal life and his marriage to crumble away until it barely held itself together with a feeble thread. And now that thread was beginning to wear away, and Ryoma thinks Xander is just as much aware of it as he is.

“Camilla made it very clear to me that I have been unfair to her, and to you, and to the rest of my family,” he sighs, his gaze sweeping slowly over the table to meet Ryoma’s next to him. When he looks into his husband’s eyes and sees how soft and vulnerable the colour residing there has become, something gives, especially in the way his face no longer feels taut and pulled as if it were held back by a band. “I haven’t been as open and true to either of you as you have been to me.”

“You’ve been stressing about something.” Ryoma doesn’t frame his words like an accusation or a question. His voice is divided between those two things, walking a thin line between accusatory and inquiringly-- and somehow, he’d been right, and known all along, though it sat between his ribs like a shapeless, formless thing that remained unidentifiable until now, until he found the right words to describe it. Xander worries his bottom lip in the thick and heavy silence that follows, like clouds gathering over the sun to choke out the light it gave. He shifts closer to Ryoma in his chair, the sound of it sliding across the wood floor made known over the sound of their dinner bubbling.

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” he whispers, his gaze looking off to the side of his husband now, as if the floor held a particular curiosity it hadn’t before and it was as good of an excuse as any to avoid meeting Ryoma’s scrutiny. He inhales deeply, and exhales in that defeated, deflating way of a balloon. “My father came to visit.” His hands settle over his husband’s and delicately play with his fingers. “And he had some choice words regarding my performance since taking over his position as senior partner. Nohr-Valla has undergone several changes-- as you know-- and has passed through many hands since he stepped down...”

“I don’t need a history lesson on the firm, Xander,” Ryoma says, his tone sharp and gradually softening once he’s sure he’s gained Xander’s audience. “How long ago was this?”

He does it again, that thing where he pulls in on himself and attempts to close himself off once more. Ryoma isn’t having any of that, not after making so much progress in such a short amount of time. He dislodges one of his hands from Xander’s tentative hold to gently tuck a strand of stray blond behind his ear. “Judging by the change in yourself in such a short while, I would say not that long ago, hmm?”

“Change?” Xander parrots.

“You did not always have an army assigned to look after your family in your stead. You did not always go as long as you do, and have, without spending time with them. You did not always go days and nights without returning home.”

“No, I… suppose I didn’t.” Ryoma watches the way he takes his lip between his teeth and worries it like a dog with a bone.

“It was all for him, then?” he probes. The silence that follows answers him where words fail his husband to do so.

“I’ve been trying to… make up for the slack--”

“The slack?” Ryoma is powerless to prevent the anger from seeping into his voice; at first, Xander thinks it’s towards him, and before he can get too far with that train of thought, Ryoma runs his hands soothingly over the expanse of Xander’s clothed shoulders to let him know it was not so. Ryoma does not press it any further than that, and simply works on arranging the lines of his countenance into something softer, and finding it impossibly hard to do so with this information coming to light. Eventually, Xander pulls away from him to check the boiling pot and reduce the heat with a flick of his wrist, the sound of his chair dragging along the floor following shortly after when he stands and disappears into the kitchen. He returns a few minutes later with the bowls and the chopsticks he’d gotten out when they entered, and he places their bowls in front of them wordlessly. 

“Yes,” he finally says, and Ryoma latches onto his voice like a dying man to a shred of hope. He watches him methodically serve dinner between them, his eyes not once leaving his face in fear of missing something small, yet important and severe all the same. Xander was made like that, of little secrets and mechanisms that were borne of a deeper, more definitive meaning that Ryoma’s come to understand as he would a language, a set of rules. The only time he does look away is to bring his hands together and show humble gratitude for the meal he has received; Xander crosses himself, mumbles his grace, and pulls away from his joined hands with an “amen”.

“Since our marriage,” he begins, arranging his chopsticks the way Ryoma had shown him clumsily, just barely managing to bring a roll of beef to his lips before it slipped and fell through his hold. “My father has been critical of how I bide my time. More accurately,” he swallows, “What I do outside the office. And he thinks I have been shirking my duties.”

“That man is incorrigible,” Ryoma mutters, bringing his bowl to his lips to drink some of the broth. “You could be dying somewhere and he’d only care how much time you’ve wasted doing that instead of filing paperwork.”

“Ryoma.” Xander attempts to upbraid him, though the severity of his voice falls through and he ends up laughing with a mushroom halfway to his mouth. “Be serious.”

“I am.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” he murmurs, echoing himself moments ago, looking at his food thoughtfully. Ryoma reaches into the pot for another piece of tofu. “I’ve been taking as many cases as I could, and closing them as fast I could, while ensuring my job was done the way it is supposed to be.”

“Something,” Ryoma prompts, his voice lilting and drawling, and Xander rolls his eyes.

“Something,” he continues, gathering noodles, “Camilla is more qualified and capable than I to deal with on her own.”

“But,” Ryoma prompts again, and Xander knocks his chopsticks away to grab a stalk of celery.

“But, in order to appease my father, I took more cases than was right of me and left everyone in the dark about it, and in return, I neglected my family, my husband, and in light of that revelation, I have caused more harm than good, and you have started to believe I don’t hold you in the same light as you hold me, and our life together.” Ryoma’s mouth falls open at that, and Xander looks a little smug when he pulls his bowl away from his mouth. “Did I get that right?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Our firm is not the only thing Camilla and I have spoken of,” he says, pushing himself away from the table to retrieve a bottle of sake from the cabinet. “She says hi, by the way.”

“Of course she does.”

“Oh, don’t be cross with her.” He returns with a bottle cradled in the bend of his elbow and Ryoma’s sake set balanced carefully in the opposite hand. “She means well. Though I will say… Hawaii Five-O?”

“You don’t get to judge me on my choices,” Ryoma snaps, watching the way Xander’s eyes crinkle in the corners with amusement clear as day.

“Fair enough. Though my sister and all, she made it was perfectly clear she was in your corner, and I do not hold it against her. I have not been spending as much time with you as I should be, and strangers have taken over every possible aspect of my role in the lives of my siblings to substitute my presence. That is unacceptable.” He pours the sake into the decanter. “While it is true I have always been this way-- prioritizing work unless it was absolutely necessary of me to do so otherwise-- I’ve gotten… carried away.”

“You never did get around to saying what you and Camilla agreed on,” Ryoma says suddenly, adding more broth to his bowl. Xander passes him his sake and places the bottle off to the side. “Sorry for interrupting you. Go on.”

“Naturally, when she pried the truth from me, she was furious with our father. You know how we are, Ryoma-- we rarely go against our father’s wishes.”

“I do. After all, what do you think got you into this mess?”

“All too true. I digress; she made me aware of how distant I’ve grown towards you all. Elise distanced herself from me to avoid interfering with my work; she’s become rather fond of Arthur, her sitter, and grown terribly attached to Effie, her tutor. And Leo, he’s... “

“Grown attached to my brother?”

“Hmm?” Xander pauses in the midst of grabbing another beef roll to fix Ryoma with a questioning look. He merely waves his hand dismissively and wraps the other around his cup. “It’s nothing.” 

“How do you mean?” He presses, lowering his hand from where it remained suspended over the ladle. “Have they set aside their differences?”

“Something like that.”

“Ryoma.”

Ryoma laughs, something genuine that fills Xander with a warmth he hasn’t felt in awhile. He missed it terribly, as if some part of him had been missing and only found its way back to him now. “Our marriage problems aren’t the only things Camilla and I’ve discussed,” he says offhandedly.

“You don’t get to chew up my words and spit them back at me.”

“You don’t get to judge me on my choice of television shows.”

“I’ll have a word with Leo…”

“And break his confidence in Camilla?”

“I’ll do what it takes to learn the truth.” Xander jabs chopsticks into his noodles like they were an enemy. “No matter what.”

“How about we settle our own issues first before you go around creating others, hmm?”

And to that, Xander had nothing to say. He’ll allow Ryoma this one victory, however small it may be in the grander scheme of things. Though, if he were completely honest with himself-- which he rarely is, but even that is a smaller victory to be claimed against himself-- he missed the bickering, the laughter, the cheap shots they tossed at one another. Quarreling did not make for a perfect marriage among others-- then again, nothing of their marriage was convenient enough to measure up to the happiness of another. To Xander, this was his happiness, this was perfection, even if it fell just outside of his realm of what perfection is, and what it should be. Maybe it’s a good thing he’s relaxed himself to this extent, and an even better thing to allow himself to laugh, the tension from his shoulders rolling away with the sound of it, the tides of merriment carrying away the stress he carried across his shoulders for the world of his father.

His world, his life, needn’t feel as heavy as the one that didn’t belong to him. He keeps his mind occupied with these thoughts through the rest of dinner, when the pot is empty, their cups have had their rounds, and the bottle of sake could find a home in their recycle bin; they had gone through it without wholly meaning to. 

“Have I told you how I’ve missed you terribly, darling?” Ryoma coos later on, his arm coming to drape over Xander’s shoulders where they sit together on the sofa. His tongue and demeanour are looser now with alcohol, his affection unbound and free as the smile on his face.

“You have not.” Xander relaxes into his touch, the hand free of his wine glass raising to lock fingers with his husband. “Or maybe you have. I don’t recall.”

“Speaking of not telling me things, you still haven’t told me what you and Camilla decided on.” Ryoma shifts to look at him, and Xander tilts further to meet his gaze. “We sort of got sidetracked there.”

“Oh… Oh! That’s right!” He pulls himself up to set his glass down onto the coffee table in front of them, twisting his body so he’s facing sideways and Ryoma can freely cradle his jaw with his hand. “I’m taking a sabbatical.”

The look on Ryoma’s face is picture perfect. Xander nearly laments not having a camera ready for it.

“What? Don’t look so surprised.”

“Xander, are you feeling unwell?”

“My love, I’m being serious.”

“No. No, I’m not hearing you right. I knew something was off. You’re truly not my husband.”

“Ryoma.” Xander laughs, raising his hands to pull Ryoma closer to him, finding the liminal space between them unacceptable to his standards. “I’m taking a sabbatical.” He repeats, slower, his hands framing his husband’s face to prevent him from retreating further. “You suggested I spend more time with my family, and so I am. We have problems we need to work through, and one night together doesn’t begin to unravel the thread I’ve tangled us in.”

“And what of your father?” Xander didn’t like the dip in his brow, the firm slant of his mouth, the sharpened edges of his eyes that were so soft mere moments ago.

“What can he say? He relinquished his position to me. He is not worth ruining my happiness over. I’m not a child. I have a life outside of that office. The world is bigger than his palm. He may lose sight of that and invite me to do so as well, but I have grown tired of playing the obedient son lost in the shadow of his father. I’m taking a sabbatical.” He repeats himself, and wonders if he does so intentionally to hammer the idea home. The battle between himself had neither been lost nor won, and remains at a stalemate even now, as he clambers onto Ryoma’s lap and reaches for the remote to mute the show they’d been watching. He wraps his arms around the other’s neck and plants himself firmly on his thighs. “I’ve had time to work through some of this, to figure some of these things out. You’re important to me, Ryoma. So is the rest of my family.”

“And what will you do, moving forward?” Ryoma whispers, his hands finding a home around his husband’s shoulders. “What will change?”

Xander leans in to press a kiss to his forehead. “Everything changes. I will take apart everything in my life and rebuild it to achieve balance. If you can do it, so can I. These past two weeks are not restricted to just that amount of time; I’ve always been this way, and I will have to do more to work on unlearning these habits of mine. I need to rebuild us, and then rebuild everything around me that I’ve pushed away without fully realizing it. I have a lifetime to rework and focus on, and I’m starting here.”

“Here?”

“Here.” Xander points to Ryoma’s chest with a finger.

“I should get you to drink with me more often,” Ryoma murmurs, distracted by the ring adorning his husband’s hand. The other laughs and falls against him weakly, and he gathers Xander in his arms to hold close; close, for if he gave his hold some slack, Xander would surely fall through it and end up injuring himself falling to the floor. “You sound like a king among his subjects.”

“Do I, now?” Xander murmurs thoughtfully, his finger tracing the shape of Ryoma’s lips absently. “Maybe we were kings. Do you ever think of that?”

“I think you should hold off on the wine for tonight.”

“Ah, yes. We were kings. We were kings at war, maybe princes, or even subjects of princes and kings ourselves, made to do their bidding.”

“Xander? Xander, what shows have you been watching?” Ryoma’s laugh is incredulous, albeit laced with thinly-veiled concern over his husband’s drunken ramblings, though Xander’s face breaks away into something softer from that momentary severity it held, and he joins in on the laughter. 

“I don’t know,” he finally says, his smile not faltering in the least. “I don’t know where I was going with that.”

“You were getting somewhere good.”

“Ah, all the steam’s gone out of me. What were we watching?”

“I don’t know. You muted the TV.”

“So? Unmute it.”

“Come to think of it,” Ryoma presses a button on the remote. “You would be a prince. A haughty, stern, righteous prince that grew up being waited on hand and foot.”

“And what would you be?”

“I’m not sure, but I doubt drunk is it.”

“It feels nice to be home,” Xander says, changing the subject just like that. He slides away from Ryoma’s lap to make a home in the crook of his arm, to rest his palm against his chest and allow his better half play with his golden hair, no longer in its usual style, now left in a state of imperfection it is not used to.

Ryoma thinks it’s funny, how much they’ve jumped around topics, more so than they would had they been sober. He doesn’t mind it all that much; too much of a serious thing can be a bad thing, and having watched Xander live his life as seriously as he has been, he thinks they need this night to themselves to care little about their lives outside of each other’s arms. Xander is right, that tonight is only a small step towards the greater goal, and nothing leading to it will be perfect, or their ideas of it (did Xander say such a thing, or did he come up with that on his own? He’s not entirely sure) but it’s something, it’s somewhere, and at the end of the day, that’s all Ryoma could hope for. And to think, a mere two hours ago, he’d been in his car fussing about these very things, about bridging the gap Xander created between the two of them when Xander’s been taking the initiative to undo his own wrongdoings, and been made aware of them, just when Ryoma thought it was a one-sided battle.

It’s nice to know Xander still had a thing against losing, he thinks, leaning to press a kiss to his temple, before the body beside him shifts entirely so they can share something more passionate, grounding, that made them whole for a moment, and another moment, and another--

“Oh.” 

“Hmm?” Ryoma does absolutely nothing to remove the disappointment shaping his sound when Xander pulls away to look at his phone. “What is it?”

“I forgot to tell the staff I’m waiving their duties and taking over.”

“Duties? Taking over?”

“Yes, Ryoma,” Xander says, as if he were speaking to a child. “I’m spending time with Leo and Elise tomorrow.”

Ryoma hums a non-committal sound of acknowledgement while the other tip-taps away at his phone. “I suppose we should thank Camilla,” he says, his hand coming up to scratch at his nose. “She’s done a lot more than she’ll take credit for, you know.”

“Oh, absolutely. I doubt we’d be where we are had she not spoken to me.”

“And to me,” Ryoma adds.

“Suppose we buy her a bottle as a gift? Or no, that seems a little... cheap.”

“She did mention wanting to take a trip to some island off the coast of Ylisstol. You remember the place, don’t you? Or was that a resort?”

“It was a resort, if I recall correctly. Yes, she would love that. We could make it a family affair, no?”

“That sounds splendid. I’m sure Takumi would love to have another chance at drowning Leo.”

“Ryoma.”

“... Perhaps wine would be our safest bet for now.”

“Perhaps,” Xander agrees, and Ryoma leans in to kiss him with another laugh bubbling in his throat.


End file.
